


Suspended Animation

by dollteeth



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollteeth/pseuds/dollteeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hogwarts hadn't changed in the least, even when he approached it as a teacher rather than a student.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suspended Animation

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in May 2006.

Almost immediately after he took the job, Severus realized that it was suffocating him.

It had been about four years since he left school, by that point, and he’d nearly forgotten how little variation there was in routine. In the interim Severus had almost managed to grow accustomed to unpredictability — it wasn’t usually _pleasant,_ but at least then he had been able to reassure himself that he was accomplishing something. He had also been able to get out of the country and change scenery once in awhile, which was a freedom he didn’t notice how much he liked until he no longer had it.

But Hogwarts hadn’t changed in the least, even when he approached it as a teacher rather than a student. Just as it had been four years ago, the work was tedious and only challenging in the least cerebral sense of the word. Every member of the faculty was at least twenty years his senior, and almost all of them had been his own professors not long ago; they never said outright that he wasn’t an equal, but McGonagall regularly got halfway through scolding Severus before realizing that _now you listen to me, young man_ was no longer the proper way to address him.

It might have been tolerable if it weren’t for the students, but as Dumbledore pointed out (twinkling annoyingly as he did so), the students were rather the point of the whole thing. The upper years remembered Severus Snape as that scrawny teenager who was (brilliant, martyred) James Potter’s preferred punching bag, and at first they tried to treat him the same way they would treat an ineffectual prefect. Severus refused to stand for that, of course, and eventually he managed to frighten them into attentive silence, but it still felt wrong to play teacher for people he had known in passing when he was a student himself.

Severus was acutely aware that he saw the same places, did the same things, and spoke to the same people with an almost clockwork regularity. He had been forbidden by Dumbledore to stray further than Hogsmeade “until things have died down,” which they weren’t showing any signs of doing. Even the letters he wrote to break the monotony were dull, keeping up the appearance of contact with all the right people just in case.

He felt compelled to write to his real friends, once in awhile, but Severus thought it was morbid to write letters to people who had died and didn’t want to get in the habit of doing it.


End file.
